Surviving Crisis in Cuba: The Second Agrarian Reform and Sustainable Agriculture
September 20, 2005
When trade relations with the Soviet Bloc crumbled in late 1989 and 1990, and the US tightened the trade embargo, Cuba was plunged into economic crisis. In 1991 the government declared the “Special Period in Peacetime,” which basically put the country on a wartime economy-style austerity program. An immediate 53 percent reduction in oil imports not only affected fuel availability for the economy, but also reduced to zero the foreign exchange that Cuba had formerly obtained via the re-export of petroleum. Imports of wheat and other grains for human consumption dropped by more than 50 percent, while other foodstuffs declined even more. Cuban agriculture was faced with an initial drop of about 70 percent in the availability of fertilizers and pesticides, and more than 50 percent in fuel and other energy sources produced by petroleum.
| Mavis Alvarez, , Martin Bourque, Fernando Funes, Lucy Martin. Armando Nova, and Peter Rosset |
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Introduction: Surviving a Crisis
When trade relations with the Soviet Bloc crumbled in late 1989 and 1990, and the US tightened the trade embargo, Cuba was plunged into economic crisis. In 1991 the government declared the “Special Period in Peacetime,” which basically put the country on a wartime economy-style austerity program. An immediate 53 percent reduction in oil imports not only affected fuel availability for the economy, but also reduced to zero the foreign exchange that Cuba had formerly obtained via the re-export of petroleum. Imports of wheat and other grains for human consumption dropped by more than 50 percent, while other foodstuffs declined even more. Cuban agriculture was faced with an initial drop of about 70 percent in the availability of fertilizers and pesticides, and more than 50 percent in fuel and other energy sources produced by petroleum (Rosset and Benjamin 1994).
Suddenly, a country with an agricultural sector technologically similar to California’s found itself almost without chemical inputs, with sharply reduced access to fuel and irrigation, and with a collapse in food imports. In the early 1990s average daily caloric and protein intake by the Cuban population may have been as much as 30 percent below levels in the 1980s.Fortunately, Cuba was not totally unprepared to face the critical situation that arose after 1989. It had, over the years, emphasized the development of human resources, and therefore had a cadre of scientists and researchers who could come forward with innovative ideas to confront the crisis. While Cuba has only two percent of the population of Latin America, it has almost 11 percent of the scientists (Rosset and Benjamin 1994).
In response to this crisis Cubans and their government rushed to develop and implement alternatives. Because of the drastically reduced availability of chemical inputs, the state hurried to replace them with locally produced, and in most cases biological, substitutes. This has meant biopesticides (microbial products) and natural enemies to combat insect pests, resistant plant varieties, crop rotations and microbial antagonists to combat plant pathogens, and better rotations and cover cropping to suppress weeds. Scarce synthetic fertilizers were supplemented by biofertilizers, earthworms, compost, other organic fertilizers, animal and green manures, and the integration of grazing animals. In place of tractors, for which fuel, tires, and spare parts were often unavailable, there was a sweeping return to animal traction (Rosset and Benjamin 1994).
When the crisis began, yields fell drastically throughout the country. But production levels for domestically-consumed food crops began to rise shortly thereafter, especially on Agricultural Production Cooperatives (CPAs) and on the farms of individual small holders or campesinos. It really was not all that difficult for the small farm sector to effectively produce with fewer inputs. After all, today’s small farmers are the descendants of generations of small farmers, with long family and community traditions of low-input production. They basically did two things: remembered the old techniques—like intercropping and manuring—that their parents and grandparents had used before the advent of modern chemicals, and simultaneously incorporated new biopesticides and biofertilizers into their production practices (Rosset 1997b; 1997c).
The state sector, on the other hand, faced the incompatibility of large monocultural tracts with low-input technology. Scale effects are very different for conventional chemical management and for low external input alternatives. Under conventional systems, a single technician can manage several thousand hectares on a “recipe” basis by simply writing out instructions for a particular fertilizer formula or pesticide to be applied with machinery on the entire area. Not so for agroecological farming. Whoever manages the farm must be intimately familiar with the ecological heterogeneity of each individual patch of soil. The farmer must know, for example, where organic matter needs to be added, and where pest and natural enemy refuges and entry points are (Altieri 1996). This partially explains the difficulty of the state sector to raise yields with alternative inputs. A partial response was obtained with a program that began before the Special Period, called Vinculando el Hombre con la Tierra, which sought to more closely link state farm workers to particular pieces of land. This plan wasn’t, however, sufficient to steer the country away from some frankly very difficult times in the early 1990s (Enriquez 1994).
In September 1993 Cuba began radically reorganizing the state sector in order to create the small-scale management units that seemed most effective in the Special Period. The government issued a decree terminating the existence of the majority of state farms, turning them into Basic Units of Cooperative Production (UBPCs), a form of worker-owned enterprise or cooperative. Much of the 80 percent of all farmland that was once held by the state, including sugarcane plantations, was essentially turned over to the workers. The UBPCs allow collectives of workers to lease state farmlands rent free, in perpetuity. Property rights remain in the hands of the state, and the UBPCs must still meet production quotas for their key crops, but the collectives are owners of what they produce. What food crops they produce in excess of their quotas could be freely sold at newly opened farmers markets. This last reform, made in 1994, offered a price incentive to farmers to make effective use of agroecological farming technologies (Rosset 1997a).
The pace of consolidation of the UBPCs has varied greatly in their first years of life. With a variety of internal management schemes, in almost all cases the effective size of the management unit has been drastically reduced. It is clear that the process of turning farm workers into farmers will take some time—it simply cannot be accomplished overnight—and many UBPCs are struggling, while others are very successful. On the average, small farmers and CPAs probably still obtain higher levels of productivity than do most UBPCs, and do so in ways that are more ecologically sound.
By the latter part of the 1990s the acute food shortage was a thing of the past, though sporadic shortages of specific items remained a problem, and food costs for the population had increased significantly. The shortage was largely overcome through domestic production increases which came primarily from small farms, and in the case of eggs and pork, from booming backyard production (Rosset 1998). The proliferation of urban farmers who produce fresh fruits, vegetables and some meat and dairy products has also been extremely important to the Cuban food supply (GNAU 2000; Murphy 1999). The earlier food shortages and the resultant increase in food prices suddenly turned urban agriculture into a very profitable activity for Cubans, and once the government threw its full support behind a nascent urban gardening movement, it exploded to near epic proportions. Formerly vacant lots and backyards in all Cuban cities now sport food crops and farm animals, and fresh produce is sold from stands throughout urban areas at prices substantially below those prevailing in the farmers’ markets. There can be no doubt that urban farming, relying almost exclusively on organic techniques, has played a key role in assuring the food security of Cuban families over the past two to three years. As an indication, more than 90% of perishable produce consumed in Havana is grown in and around the city limits.
Full Report:
Surviving Crisis in Cuba: The Second Agrarian Reform and Sustainable Agriculture
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